#927744 debmake: Please add support for SPDX-License-Identifiers

Package:
debmake
Source:
debmake
Submitter:
Karsten Merker
Date:
2026-01-12 09:55:02 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
Tags:
#927744#5
Date:
2019-04-22 13:22:49 UTC
From:
To:
Package: debmake
Version: 4.3.1-1
Severity: wishlist

Hello,

more and more upstream projects (including a number of high-profile
ones such as the Linux kernel) are moving to including SPDX license
identifiers (https://spdx.org/ids) instead of the full license text
(in case of BSD- and MIT-style licenses) respectively the
short-form (L)GPL notice in their source files.  These identifiers
are intended to make the license a piece of code is distributed
under easily machine-parsable while keeping them human-readable.

Examples:
---------
SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause
SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later

Currently "debmake -cc" doesn't recognize the SPDX IDs and flags
all files using them as ""License: __UNKNOWN__".  It would be great
if you could extend the patterns that "debmake -cc" matches on for
recognizing the various licenses to include the corresponding SPDX
license identifiers.  A list of the identifiers and the
corresponding full license text is available at
https://spdx.org/licenses/.

Regards,
Karsten
#927744#10
Date:
2019-04-22 16:05:26 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Thanks but I am leaning toward dropping this part of code and replace it
with external tool.

I don't think I have time and energy to keep it maintained ...

licensecheck should do a good job I think.

What do you think of licensecheck by mostly from Jonas Smedegaard.
I think he is doing a good job.

Osamu
#927744#15
Date:
2019-04-22 18:36:24 UTC
From:
To:
Unfortunately "licensecheck" has the same limitation as "demake -cc"
with regard to SPDX license identifiers: they get flagged as
"License: UNKNOWN".

Regards,
Karsten
#927744#20
Date:
2026-01-12 09:52:16 UTC
From:
To:
control: tags -1 wontfix
thanks

Thank you for your interest on debmake.

This is for https://bugs.debian.org/927744

I am migrating to use licensecheck for debmake backend (instead of internal
lc.py).

So requested feature is out of scope for this debmake program to address and
marked this as wontfix.

Please discuss this with licensecheck.

Osamu
#927744#25
Date:
2026-01-12 09:52:16 UTC
From:
To:
control: tags -1 wontfix
thanks

Thank you for your interest on debmake.

This is for https://bugs.debian.org/927744

I am migrating to use licensecheck for debmake backend (instead of internal
lc.py).

So requested feature is out of scope for this debmake program to address and
marked this as wontfix.

Please discuss this with licensecheck.

Osamu